Must-Have
  • Published: 1 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099437925
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

Must-Have

The Hidden Instincts Behind Everything We Buy

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Acclaimed psychologist Geoffrey Miller uses evolutionary psychology to reveal how the dizzying, brand-saturated world of modern consumerism really works.

Why do we buy? What is it that governs our choice of car? How does advertising really work? And what can the story of Aladdin teach us about today's world?

In this brilliantly original, provocative and witty book, Geoffrey Miller - acclaimed author of The Mating Mind - takes us on a journey through the surreal wonderlands of marketing, advertising, and media to explore the hidden instincts behind our choices. Combining this with the latest developments in evolutionary psychology, genetics and consumer research, he explains why we buy what we buy and how we can escape the excesses of twenty-first century consumerism.
  • Published: 1 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099437925
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

About the author

Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller is a tenured professor of evolutionary psychology at the university of New Mexico. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology from Stanford University in 1993, having also studied at Columbia University, and lived in England from 1993 to 2001, where he worked at the universities of Sussex and Nottingham, UCL, and LSE. His 2000 debut The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature was praised by a host of prominent UK reviewers and scientists, and launched a new research field on how people evolved to display their mental traits during courtship.

portrait photo of Geoffrey Miller

Also by Geoffrey Miller

The Mating Mind
See all

Praise for Must-Have

Frankly gripping

The Times

Ingenious, and brilliantly argued

Literary Review

One of the punchiest evolutionary psychologists now publishing ... a major work of subversion ... it couldn't be more timely

Evening Standard

Intelligent, engaging, exasperating and funny

New Scientist

Evolutionary psychology is a young discipline, but Miller, a professor at the University of New Mexico, is using it to shed light on consumer behaviour in a capitalist world, as he believes blunt instruments have been used to examine it in the past

Alastair Mabbott, The Herald

A thought-provoking analysis of how marketing really works and it's relationship to our ancient psychological traits

Inbali Iserles, Independent

His cost-benefits analyses of showoffery are pure logic, cool, and witty with it, and in the end, add up to an intelligent programme to shift human signalling systems toward more enjoyable forms of display that wont cost us the Earth

Vera Rule, Guardian

Superb... Stimulating and full of wit

Prospect